The present invention relates to an audio server which distributes audio contents to users by employing a network such as the internet or the like.
In the prior art, services have been implemented which distribute items of audio contents (music) to users by employing a network such as the internet or the like. With such a service, an audio server is utilized upon which a plurality of items of audio content are stored. This audio server is connected to a network. A user actuates an information processing device such as a personal computer or a portable terminal or the like, and accesses the audio server via the network. And, upon being thus accessed, the audio server selects the desired item of audio contents from the various items of audio contents which it is storing, and downloads this desired item to the user via the network. In particular, recently, along with the widespread dissemination of portable type music players, the number of users who are employing this type of audio download service has increased spectacularly.
Furthermore, with regard to the audio items which are downloaded, techniques for summarizing how each of the users evaluates each of his downloaded items, and for taking advantage of these summarized results for marketing or the like, have been proposed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication 2005-352601, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication 2001-338236, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication 2001-147939, etc.
However, the techniques proposed in these documents are techniques for providing information to the suppliers of the items of audio contents for marketing or the like, and are not directed to providing the summarized results of these evaluations to the various users. Due to this, a user has only been able to evaluate audio items on his individual basis, and has not been able to share in common the evaluations of these audio items performed by other people. Furthermore if, while a user downloads an item of audio contents, the summarized result of evaluations by other persons with regard to this item of audio contents were to be displayed to him, then, during the download, the user would become aware in advance of these displayed evaluations of this item by other people, so that the number of users who were not able to evaluate this item of audio contents in an unbiased manner according to their own reactions would be increased. As a result, the reliability of the summarized evaluations of the various items of audio contents would be decreased.
Thus, with the prior art techniques mentioned above, it has not been possible to make the fact that evaluations with regard to items of audio contents are shared in common between users be compatible with the goal of ensuring the reliability of the summarized results which are obtained by summarizing these evaluations of items of audio contents over a large number of users.
Accordingly, the object of the present invention is to provide an audio server, with which it is made possible for the sharing in common of evaluations of items of audio contents between users to be compatible with ensuring the reliability of the summarized results which are obtained by summarizing these evaluations of items of audio contents over a large number of users.